Note 16 — NEW CUSTOM.

"Similes habent labra lactucas. A thistle is a sallet fit for an ass's mouth. We use when we would signify that things happen to people which are suitable to them, or which they deserve; as when a dull scholar happens to a stupid or ignorant master, a froward wife to a peevish husband, &c. Dignum patella operculum. Like priest, like people, and on the contrary. These proverbs are always taken in the worst sense. Tal carne, tal cultello, Ital. Like flesh, like knife." [See Hazlitt's "Proverbs," &c., 1869, pp. 33, 263.]